1st Article



Data from the 2007 National Diabetes Fact Sheet (the most recent year for which data is available)
Total: 23.6 million children and adults in the United States—7.8% of the population—have diabetes.
Diagnosed: 17.9 million people
Undiagnosed: 5.7 million people
Pre-diabetes: 57 million people
New Cases: 1.6 million new cases of diabetes are diagnosed in people aged 20 years and older each year.

Total prevalence of diabetes

Under 20 years of age
  • 186,300, or 0.22% of all people in this age group have diabetes
  • About 1 in every 400 to 600 children and adolescents has type 1 diabetes
  • About 2 million adolescents aged 12-19 have pre-diabetes
Age 20 years or older
  • 23.5 million, or 10.7% of all people in this age group have diabetes
Age 60 years or older
  • 12.2 million, or 23.1% of all people in this age group have diabetes
Men
  • 12.0 million, or 11.2% of all men aged 20 years or older have diabetes
Women
  • 11.5 million, or 10.2% of all women aged 20 years or older have diabetes
Race and ethnic differences in prevalence of diagnosed diabetes
After adjusting for population age differences, 2004-2006 national survey data for people diagnosed with diabetes, aged 20 years or older include the following prevalence by race/ethnicity:
  • 6.6% of non-Hispanic whites
  • 7.5% of Asian Americans
  • 11.8% of non-Hispanic blacks
  • 10.4% of Hispanics
Among Hispanics rates were:
  • 8.2% for Cubans
  • 11.9% for Mexican Americans
  • 12.6% for Puerto Ricans.
Morbidity and Mortality
Deaths
Diabetes was the seventh leading cause of death listed on U.S. death certificates in 2006. This ranking is based on the 72,507 death certificates in 2006 in which diabetes was listed as the underlying cause of death. According to death certificate reports, diabetes contributed to a total of 233,619 deaths in 2005, the latest year for which data on contributing causes of death are available.
Complications
Heart disease and stroke
• In 2004, heart disease was noted on 68% of diabetes-related death certificates among people aged 65 years or older.
• In 2004, stroke was noted on 16% of diabetes-related death certificates among people aged 65 years or older.
Adults with diabetes have heart disease death rates about 2 to 4 times higher than adults without diabetes.
• The risk for stroke is 2 to 4 times higher among people with diabetes.
High blood pressure
• In 2003–2004, 75% of adults with self-reported diabetes had blood pressure greater than or equal to 130/80 mmHg, or used prescription medications for hypertension.
Blindness
Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness among adults aged 20–74 years.
• Diabetic retinopathy causes 12,000 to 24,000 new cases of blindness each year.
Kidney disease
Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, accounting for 44% of new cases in 2005.
• In 2005, 46,739 people with diabetes began treatment for end-stage kidney disease in the United States and Puerto Rico.
• In 2005, a total of 178,689 people with end-stage kidney disease due to diabetes were living on chronic dialysis or with a kidney transplant in the United States and Puerto Rico.
Nervous system disease (Neuropathy)
• About 60% to 70% of people with diabetes have mild to severe forms of nervous system damage.
Amputation
• More than 60% of nontraumatic lower-limb amputations occur in people with diabetes.
• In 2004, about 71,000 nontraumatic lower-limb amputations were performed in people with diabetes.
Cost of Diabetes
$174 billion: Total costs of diagnosed diabetes in the United States in 2007
  • $116 billion for direct medical costs
  • $58 billion for indirect costs (disability, work loss, premature mortality)
After adjusting for population age and sex differences, average medical expenditures among people with diagnosed diabetes were 2.3 times higher than what expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes.
The American Diabetes Association has created a Diabetes Cost Calculatorthat takes the national cost of diabetes data and provides estimates at the state and congressional district level.
Factoring in the additional costs of undiagnosed diabetes, pre-diabetes, and gestational diabetes brings the total cost of diabetes in the United States in 2007 to $218 billion.
• $18 billion for the 6.3 million people with undiagnosed diabetes
• $25 billion for the 57 million American adults with pre-diabetes
• $623 million for the 180,000 pregnancies where gestational diabetes is diagnosed
For Additional Information
These stastics and additional information can be found in the National Diabetes Fact Sheet, 2007, the most recent comprehensive assessment of the impact of diabetes in the United States, jointly produced by the CDC, NIH, ADA, and other organizations.

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Ron Santo Article

Ron Santo, who battled juvenile diabetes to become a star player with the Chicago Cubs and a radio announcer famously devoted to the perennial losers, lost his life on Thursday. He died of complications of bladder cancer at a hospital in Arizona at the age of 70.
"Ronnie will forever be the heart and soul of Cubs fans," Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts said in a statement Friday.
Santo, a nine-time all-star in his 15-year career, was widely regarded as one of the best players never to make it into the Hall of Fame. The quiet sadness with which he met the news year after year that he hadn't been inducted helped cement his relationship with the fans.
But simply making it into the Big Leagues represented a personal triumph for Santo, who was diagnosed with diabetes in 1959 on the brink of his debut with the Cubs.
"I was diagnosed with diabetes at age 18," Santo told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1990, the New York Times **reported**. "I didn't know what it was, so I went to the library and looked it up. I can still remember the feeling I had when I read the description: Life expectancy of a juvenile insulin-dependent diabetic: 25 years. It also stated that it would cause blindness, kidney failure and hardening of the arteries. At that point, I said to myself, 'I'm going to fight this thing and beat it.' That's how badly I wanted to live and be a big league ballplayer."
Santo began taking insulin but hid his illness for years, fearing it would derail his career, according to the Times.
The disease did take a heavy toll on Santo. After retirement, he suffered heart attacks and underwent heart and bladder surgery, according to the Times. His legs were amputated in 2001 and 2002.

But he remained popular for his fund-raising efforts for diabetes as well as his work in the radio booth, where he made it clear that nobody rooted harder for the Cubs - and nobody took it harder when they lost.
Santo's groans of "Oh, nooo!" and "It's bad" when something bad happened to the Cubs, sometimes just minutes after he shouting, "YES! YES!" or "ALL RIGHT!" became part of team lore as the "Cubbies" came up short year after year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2phQH6yThvo&NR=1